The Final Text of the Declaration of Independence July 4 1776

Introduction

On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee introduced
into Congress a resolution,(adopted on July 2)
which asserted that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, fee
and independent States. While this resolution was being discussed,on June
11 a committee,
consisting of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R.
Livingston , and Roger Sherman was appointed to
draft a Declaration of Independence.
In his Autobiography written in 1805,
Adams states that the committee of five decided upon "which the declaration
was to consist", and it then appointed Jefferson and himself to form a
subcommittee to really write them down. Now Jefferson and Adams have two
completely different versions of what happened then. Adams says:

Jefferson proposed to me to make the draught, I said I will not; You shall do
it. Oh no! Why will you not? You ought to do it. I will not. Why? Reasons
enough. What can be your reasons? Reason 1st. You are a Virginian and a
Virginian ough to appear at the head of this business. Reason 2nd. I am
obnoxious, suspected and unpopular; you are very much otherwise. Reason 3rd.
You can write ten times better than I can. 'Well", said Jefferson, 'if you are
decided I will do as well as I can'. Very well, when you have drawnit up we
will have a meeting.

Jefferson's version is completely different. In a letter to Maddison of 1823
he writes:

Mr. Adams memory has led him into unquestionable error. At the age of 88 and
47 years after the transactions, . . . this is not wonderful. Nor should I . .
. venture to oppose my memory to his, were it not supported by written notes,
taken by myself at the moment and on the spot. . . The Committee of 5 met, no
such thing as a sub-committee was proposed, but they unanimously pressed on
myself alone to undertake the draught. I consented; I drew it; but before I
reported it to the committee I communicated it separately to Dr. Franklin and
Mr. Adams requesting their corrections;. . . and you have seen the original
paper now in my hands, with the corrections of Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams
interlined in their own handwriting. Their alterations were two or three only,
and merely verbal. I then wrote a fair copy, reported it to the committee, and
from them, unaltered to the Congress.

The draft was presented to Congress on June 28 and
adopted by Congress on July 4,
after a number of changes had been made. There are no journals on the debates
and the amendments. The most important of these were the
excision of a passage indicting the slave trade and
a number of passages were reworded in a more pious form..
A formal parchment copy of the Declaration, adopted in Congress 4 July 1776,
was available for signing on
August 2, and most of the 55 signatures were inscribed upon it on that
date.
The intention of the Declaration, Jefferson later wrote, was not saying some-
thing new, but

to place before mankind the common sense of the
subject, in
terms so plain and firm as to command their assent... Neither aiming at
originality of principles or sentiments, nor yet copied from any particular
and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American
mind.

There is still another version of the text, the so-called Lee-version. This
is the text that Jefferson sent to Lee. This may be a better version of the
draft. See Carl L. Becker, The declaration of independence. A
study in the history of political ideas (New York, 1922) page 174.

One of the inspirations for the American Declaration of Independence was the Plakkaat van Verlatinghe of 1581 in which the Dutch abjured the King of Spain as their sovereign.

This is the final version of the text. Some phrases are different in
the first drafts. These are indicated as a link to the first draft. There you
can read the original wording.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one
people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with
another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate
and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God
entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that
they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That
whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is
the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments
long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more
disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by
abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long
train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their
right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new
guards for their future security. --

Such has been the patient sufferance of these
colonies; and such is now
the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of
government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history
of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the
establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let
facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary
for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and
pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent
should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to
attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large
districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of
representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and
formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable,
and distant from the depository of their public records, for the
sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with
manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such
dissolutions, to cause others
to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation,
have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state
remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from
without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that
purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing
to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the
conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of
justice, by refusing his assent
to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of
their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new
offices, and sent hither swarms of
officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to
civil power.

He has combined with others to subject
us to a jurisdiction foreign to
our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to
their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders
which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring
province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging
its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for
introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

He is at this time transporting
large armies of foreign mercenaries to
complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun
with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the
most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized
nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas
to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their
friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

In every stage of these oppressions we have
petitioned for redress in
the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered
only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by
every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free
people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our
British brethren. We
have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to
extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them
of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have
appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have
conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these
usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and
correspondence. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which
denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of
mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United
States of America, in
General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the
world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the
authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and
declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and
independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the
British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the
state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as
free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude
peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts
and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support
of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes
and our sacred honor.